


Sweeping Across The Pitch

by Koektrommel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Expanded Universe, Gen, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Quidditch, Sports
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-24 12:05:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17703968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koektrommel/pseuds/Koektrommel
Summary: In an attempt to bring the major wizarding schools closer together, without 'any of that nastiness from the last tri-wizard tournament', the  International Confederation of Wizards' Quidditch Committee has organized an international tournament between the schools, forcing players from the four different houses to work together. Will they be able to put their differences aside and bring the first School-cup home?





	1. Prologue

It was one of those late summer days where autumn made an early visit. Students had boarded the red train as soon as they could to get out of the wind that tore through the platform, fast enough to pull the icy cold rain along with it, or huddling together with their friends and families before the train was set to leave.   
Nyla Morus was one of the few lone figures in the crowd, pulling her luggage behind her as she wound her way through the small clusters of people. Her mother had insisted on escorting her to the train, but Nyla was sixteen this year and too old to have her mother walk her to the train, so she had given her the slip and was now attempting a regal gait as she crossed the platform to the front of the train. The wind tore through her brown hair when she was halfway past the train, and temporarily stopped her when her robes acted as a makeshift sail.   
She stopped for a brief a moment, looking a bit forlorn at the front of the train, where she had sat since her first year at Hogwarts, but now seemed like quite the walk.   
“You could just walk through the train,” her mother said, appearing besides her, “Honestly. Why would you go around when it’s warm inside.”   
Nyla shrugged.   
“Come on, get in.”   
Nyla considered arguing with her mother, but it made for a convenient excuse to give up on fighting the weather.   
“Fine,”  she said, making a show of not wanting to get on the train yet.   
“Oh, and honey. You forgot this.”   
Nyla suppressed a groan when she was the clear ball in her mother’s hand.   
“Mom, I don't need a remembrall…”   
“If you didn’t need a remembrall, you wouldn’t have forgotten the remembrall.”   
With an exasperated sigh, Nyla took the ball, which immediately turned red. She forcefully put it in her pocket.   
“What did you forget?”

“If I knew what I forgot, I wouldn’t have forgotten it! Probably nothing important.”   
“You forgot your new earrings,” Mrs Morus said patiently, handing another small object to her daughter.   
“Thanks, mom...” Nyla muttered, putting the box of earrings in her other pocket.

The two stood awkwardly in the doorway of the train for a moment, before Nyla mumbled she should probably find her friends if she still wanted a seat,   
Mrs Morus beckoned her daughter for a hug, then waved to Nyla before she disappeared around a corner.   
  
  
Immediately Nyla regretted getting on board the train, before reaching her wagon; she had to maneuver her luggage through the narrow corridors and worse, she heard a voice, she definitely did not want to hear before she reached the school, somewhere up ahead.   
“My father wanted to pull me out of school,” the indignant boy said, “Wanted me to become an _accountant_!”    
“A what?” came the disinterested reply from whoever he had been talking to.   
“An accountant. It’s a muggle who works with money.   
“Goblins aren’t muggles,”  the other voice said.   
“Still. He refuses to believe I will go professional,”  the boy, Ira Roitrecht, continued, “He says professional sports are for morons and Quidditch is probably even dumber.”   
“Well, your dad’s a muggle, what does he know?”   
“Sounds like a smart man to me,”  Nyla said with a smirk, “You’re never going pro.”   
“Morus,” Ira responded and got to his feet. He was tall and built like a wrecking ball, dwarfing Nyla. He furrowed his shaggy brows, then grabbed the door of his compartment, “This is a private conversation.”   
“Maybe don’t yell for the entire train to hear then.”   
“Save it for the pitch,” Ira’s companion muttered. Nyla gave him a cursory glance, noted it was the Gryffindor keeper, Kimon Guerre. A lanky player, who always seemed somewhat tired, but was deceptively fast on the field. His blonde messy hair hung over his eyes, which he kept closed, then put his hands behind his head, “Now go away, Morus. We’ll beat you later.”   
“Are you captain?” Nyla asked Ira, ignoring the Gryffindor sleeper.   
“Of course I am, who else would it be?”  
“Somebody with control over his temper?”   
Ira slammed the door shut, flipped off Nyla and closed the curtain.   
  


 

“Case in point,” Nyla grinned to herself and continued her walk.   
Two compartments further, Nyla ran into another pair of her rivals. In one compartment was the Hufflepuff beater Bredbeddle Lividus, a distant cousin of hers, so she was forced to exchange niceties with him.   
The redheaded boy looked up at and gave her an apologetic look.   
“Can’t sit here,” he said and gestured to the gaggle of first-years around him, who were all looking in wonder at the device one of them had in his hands.   
“I wouldn’t want too,”  Nyla said, “Why don’t you sit with your mates?”   
“Compartment was full,” was the muttered answer.   
“You need better friends.”    
He shrugged, “I can get some reading done, I guess, and we’ll swap later. Or I can sit with y…”   
“No can do,” Nyla said hastily, “We have a team meeting. Can’t have you snooping.”   
Bredbeddle sighed, “Fine then. I’ll see you at school.”   
Nyla nodded and passed another compartment where she found the other Hufflepuff beater, in a compartment with their chasers and some friends. She gave the hufflepuffs a short acknowledgement and only got a pop of the beater’s gum in return. The raven-haired beauty smiled, then turned her full attention back to her book, apparently getting a head start with studying.   
Two cars further, she almost overtook another of the school’s quidditch players, Charity Shortbread, a chaser for the ravenclaw team,who had already started studying. There were only two people in her compartment, but all six seats had been occupied, covered in books and piles of paper.   
“Late start on their homework,” I suppose, she muttered.   
“Early start on our future,”  Charity said cheerfully, nodding her head approvingly at her companion, letting her pink hair dance as she spoke.   
“Going to be rich!”   
“What’s the plan this year?”   
“As if I’d tell you, shoo.”   
Nyla shrugged her shoulders, it was the tenth get-rich-scheme she had seen from Charity in four years.   
“Good luck then…”

  
  


It had taken her a full fifteen minutes to finally find the seat she normally had, already saved by  two of her own team’s chasers and three girls.   
“Merlin’s beard,”  she muttered when she heard the conversation about boys, Rawsthorne as always leading the conversation, which at the moment was about the Chudley Cannons’ seeker.   
“Ladies,” Nyla greeted them and took the last open seat.   
“And gentleman,”  Rawsthorne added.   
“Barely, Neal.”    
Neal Rawsthorne rolled his eyes dramatically at Nyla, then continued his conversation with the girls. Nyla just listened.   
  



	2. Start of term announcements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the students learn about the upcoming quidditch tournament.

“So they all taste the same?” one of the girls asked, putting a lollipop into her mouth “How dull.”  
“Might be,” Neal said, “But I’ll take my chances with muggle candy ever since I had a sewage flavoured bean. Plus, the gum in the center is great.”  
“What’s gum?”  
“Just wait, you’ll find out. Hey, Nyla, you didn’t tell us what you did in your vacation yet.”  
Nyla had been staring out of the window while the others talked about candy. The rain had stopped and the evening sky turned the clouds into orange puffs of cotton candy.  
“Huh? What was that?” she said, pretending not to have heard her friend.  
“Your vacation. What did you do.”  
“Oh,” she said airily, “Father took us to Indonesia to visit my cousin.”  
“Did anything fun?”  
“Practiced under-water flying mostly.”  
“That’s called swimming,”  
“No. I practiced flying underwater to get better at manoeuvring quickly.”  
“...how?”  
“Bobble head charm.”  
“So, Nyla,” a redheaded girl, Melody, interrupted, the mischief audible in her voice, “What did you lose this year?”  
“Nothing,” Nyla replied indignantly.  
“Nyla…”  
“Fine Neal,” Nyla snapped, then added in a mutter, “Lost my wand…”  
It took a moment for the others to process what Nyla had said, then they burst into laughter, leaving Nyla to sulk for a few minutes  
“But,” neal said through his tears of laughter, “How?”  
“It fell out of my pocket under water.”  
“Why didn’t you take it out?”  
“Forgot,” Nyla muttered, sparking another bout of laughter. She sank deeper into her seat.  
“Well, show us..”  
“Show you what?”  
“Your new wand.”  
Nyla retrieved her wand from her pocket, a short black model with a spiralling carved pattern around it. A small pink diamond rested on the back.  
“This is not an Ollivander,” Neal said, “Where’d you get it.”  
“On the way home, South-Africa.”  
“What’s the core?” Neal continued his queries  
“Dragon heartstring.”  
“I should go to Africa for a wand,” Melody said, her eyes sparkling as she admired the spiraling patterns. Nyla took her wand and put it back in her pocket.  
“Be my guest,” she said coolly, “This one’s mine.”  
Melody frowned at the response, then shrugged and plopped some candy in her mouth.  
“We should get in our robes,” Neal said, in an attempt to break the tension between the two girls, “We’ll be there any minute.”  
“Out then,” Nyla said.  
“You know I won’t look,” he said, petulantly getting up.  
“But they’ll look at you,” Nyla said, “Shoo.”  
Neal rolled his eyes and left the compartment, “Fine. I’ll get dressed in the loo.” 

 

An uneventful carriage-trip and an equally unremarkable sorting ceremony later, the students sat waiting for their start-of-term feast, and curiously watching the additions to the teachers’ table. Apart from the usual complement of teachers, but several extra seats had been brought up, nearly doubling the amount of people at the head of the room.  
Cathrin Smethwyck, owner of Quality Quidditch Supplies was having an animated conversation with Mister Laach, the quidditch instructor. Next to them was one of the more easily recognized people at the table, The Holyhead Harpies star chaser, Ginny Weasley, who was laughing at something the care of magical creatures, professor Hagrid, had just told her. Other people at the table were recognized by the student body as the head of the Department of magical Games and Sports. A serious looking wizard who just stared into the middle distance, ignoring the conversations next to him, a well known Quidditch correspondent who appeared to be listening carefully to everything that was being said, absentmindedly transfiguring her wine glass and spilling the contents over the table. Another wizard at the table had a camera in his hands and was tinkering with it while the professors spoke. Others were recognized as professional quidditch players of various teams  
The headmistress, Professor McGonagall, coughed once and the muttering in the great hall immediately died down.  
“Good evening and welcome, students,” she said calmly, “Before we have the feast, I have several start of term announcements.”  
“First. There will be no house quidditch cup this year.”  
The great hall exploded in indignant cries of protest, students yelling through each other in an attempt to be heard.  
“The reason for which,” she said sharply, returning the silence, “Will now be told by mister Jorkins.”  
Mister Jorkins nervously got to his feet, straightened his ties, of which he strangely wore two, and took place at the lectern where Professor Mcgonagall had stood a moment before.  
He took a piece of parchment from his robe and put a pair of reading glasses on and started to into a dry, long document, losing his audience within seconds.  
“As I’ve told you many times in your time here, Quentin” Professor McGonagall said, “Try it in your own words.”  
“Yes, professor,” mister Jorkins muttered, looking like a student failing a presentation, “Well. There was a decision among the powers that be,” he paused to snicker at his own joke, “To have a tournament to bring the international schools closer together.”  
“A triwizard tournament?” a seventh year Gryffindor yelled, obviously excited, before being silenced with a look from the headmistress.  
“Unfortunately, due to a certain nastiness in the last triwizard tournament, we’ve decided against that, young man. No, we are having an international quidditch tournament, just for students.  
The audience took a moment to process what Jorkins had said, before exploding in a new rapid muttering, which again was brought to a halt by professor McGonagall.  
“Which house will play!” the same seventh year gryffindor yelled.  
“That’s enough, mister Hopkins.”  
Hopkins sat down and eyed Jorkins, adding loud enough for everyone to hear, “Should be Gryffindor though…”  
“The team that will play,” Jorkins said, snickering nervously, “Will be composed of the best players from each house. Fourth years and up only.”  
There was a disagreeing din of muttering from the lower years before Jorkins could continue, “Mrs. Smethwyck of Quality Quidditch Supplies has seen to grace the Hogwarts team with brooms as well as the other necessary equipment. The players will be chosen by a Council of players from the UK teams. Tryouts will start the second week of classes. Good luck to you.”  
Professor McGonagall clapped her hands twice, signalling the teachers to start the polite applause for Jorkins, which was echoed by the students.  
“Furthermore,” Professor McGonagall said, after the applause had stopped, “The tournament won’t be held on Hogwarts grounds, as several schools thought it would give the Hogwarts team an unfair advantage. The tournament will be held at a, for now, undisclosed location.”  
“Mister Creevey here,” she said, gesturing to the young man with the camera, “Will be in charge of making sure everyone will be able to see the match.”  
Creevey didn’t respond to his name being mentioned, muttering to himself while he poked his wand into his camera.  
“He seems to be preoccupied,” McGonagall said disapprovingly, “But if you are able to cast a corporeal patronus, Dennis might have a job for you, assisting with his end of affairs. Students who know about the muggle-contraption bellyvision might understand what he’s talking about. Helping him is worth a charms credit.  
Finally, due to our proximity to the special arena, we will be receiving several teams from other schools here during the year. I expect you will be on your best behaviour when they’re here. Now with all that out of the way, enjoy your meal and welcome to another year at Hogwarts.”  
McGonagall sat down again, leaving the students to their excited conversation.


End file.
